


have it all

by pavelsmerdyakov



Category: Grand Theft Auto IV, Grand Theft Auto Series (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Disordered Eating, Fluff, Homophobic Language, M/M, Mentions of Mental Illness, POV Second Person, Post Game, its fucking miserable at times but then its nice, like theyre soft with eachother, mentions of sexual abuse, packie is an idiot can that be a tag, perspective switches, theres some fluff i promise, they both have ptsd my dude
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-09-23 14:02:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20341306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pavelsmerdyakov/pseuds/pavelsmerdyakov
Summary: You have three options.>Deal>Revenge>Have it all.Through a series of events, Niko is responsible for the deaths of both Kate and Roman. He and Packie, clinging to eachother, flee to the ends of the earth - that is, Los Santos - and attempt to make a fresh start together. Things don't go so well, though, and they very quickly get sucked back into the crime scene. It's a whirlwind of grief, emotions, and generally just trying to figure out where their relationship stands in the midst of the mess they've created.(this was very self indulgent.)





	1. part i: this problem's gonna last more than the weekend

**Author's Note:**

> the premise was basically just combining the revenge and the deal missions, and then pegorino killed roman and kate. i literally do not remember anything else and i left myself no notes. i wrote this in 2017 and i found it last week. im very miffed, but the premise was never important, all i really cared about was the relationship/character development/etc. anyway. im just posting this to put off organizing my room. if you have questions ask
> 
> i'll finish writing this within the next few months hopefully (theres only one or two more chapters left and i do have notes on that). for all four of you packo shippers still out there: I GOT U. its in a fucked up fashion but i got u

LOS SANTOS, EARLY 2009  
PACKIE

There comes a point in every man's life where he must decide whether or not his efforts up to that point have been worth it. Whether the energy expended was worth the outcome. Whether or not he is happy. 

This is a point you've hit not once, not twice, but probably six dozen times already. It's kind of fucking hard not to think about how miserable you are when it's all consuming, relentless, and constant. Like, it'd be nice to wake up ONE morning and not be stuck thinking about how badly you want to die, or how your life has gone to absolute shit, or how maybe - just fucking maybe - you'll be saved by God and get run over by a tweaked out cab driver. That'd be nice. That'd be ideal. 

But, well, that's not going to happen any time soon - you've got the luck of the Irish, sure, but have the Irish really had the best of luck, historically? - and so you just make yourself man up and deal with shit as they come. 

Some days are harder than others. 

"Just stab him, man. Before he wakes up."

"You really think being stabbed wouldn't wake someone up?"

"What, Mr. Bellic's never had the luxurious experience of wakin' up to a couple of stab wounds? Never had a rough night at the bar and woke up with a plethora of holes in your body? What a quaint lifestyle you've lived thus-so-far, Niko. I'm downright envious." 

He rolls his eyes, which doesn't really help; you consider going off on him further about chloroform - like, dude, you held the towel to his face for like three minutes, the guy's probably definitely out - but you're almost certain you've had this exact conversation before, so you hold back. Things are feeling repetitive these days. It's probably just a side effect of getting back into the game after months of laying low - because, honestly, you've spent such a large chunk of your life doing illegal shit that it wouldn't surprise you one bit that this very scenario has already happened to you. Between the drink, drugs, willful repression, and forgetting, the exact details of things have a tendency of getting hazy. 

"Come on, man. I drove us here, I busted my ass gettin' the chloroform, I staked the place out, I - I shimmied through a fuckin' window and landed in his cat's litterbox for this, least you can do is actually KILL the guy for me."

It's a false equivalency and the both of you know it. 

"I see where you're coming from," Niko says evenly, "but you're also the one who got us into this mess in the first place, so forgive me if I am not feeling the most charitable." He's holding the knife - an oversized, chintzy thing - loose in his left hand. 

That's something the two of you haven't really bothered to hash out yet. It's mostly because both of you are equal parts pissed and intrigued, though you know Niko is loathe to admit the latter part. 

The thing about this - about this lifestyle - is that it is more intoxicating than any number of drinks you could ever pour down your throat. The adrenaline, the payout, the stark feeling of actually being alive...it's awful, but you can't get away. It kills you to think about, but you're a weak enough person to be dependent on it. You're a weak enough person to let the bulk of your personality by shaped and molded and formed by it. You're a weak enough person to continue to indulge in it. You hate it, but a disgusting beast inside you can't help but to fucking love everything about it.

Whatever. It doesn't matter. You shake your head and continue the tirade. 

"Don't they got communism where you're from? Come on, comrade, help me increase the means of production - help a brother out." 

He doesn't answer. To be perfectly honest, you aren't exactly up to date on the history or culture of Serbia or Yugoslavia or whatever the fuck it's called. School wasn't a...*constant* in your adolescence, and it's still more fun to prod him with dull accusations than sit down for once and look it up on Eyefind. Ignorance is bliss. Willful ignorance is even better.

Niko sighs, and rolls his shoulders. He gives you A Look, which you interpret to mean Okay, Packie, I Will Stab This Passed Out Gang Member Because You Got Cold Feet And, Being Your Closest And Currently Only Friend, Only Want The Best For You, Even If It Comes At The Expense Of Killing A Man Myself, but you really know he means it as more of a "we need to talk later" kind of deal. That's the thing with Niko - maybe it's his grasp on English (which is pretty fucking good these days, even if he still insists it's tenuous at best), but he communicates too often nonverbally. It makes it delightfully easy to intentionally misinterpret them, and you have won many conversations with him using this method. At the very least, it paints a more pretty picture of him than the dismal reality; just as you know he doesn't like to think of you as the pathetic and suicidally depressed junkie you are these days, you try not to think of him as the morally ambiguous PTSD-addled killer he is. 

You offer him finger guns and a wink, and then make a point to step back from the crumpled corpse. Well, body. Soon to be a corpse. That shit's gonna be leakin' like a popped fruit gusher once Niko's through. 

You do feel kind of bad, on some level. You don't know if this particular Triad member ever *did* anything that made him worth killing off, or if he just got the short straw when your boss tried to figure out who to kill to get the most attention. 

When you and Niko arrived in Los Santos, you spent a lot of time getting fucked up. Niko did, even, for a while; it was horribly self indulgent and sad, and honestly, there's a black hole in your memory where much of the two weeks are in your mind. Hotels, scratching yourself in drug-induced hazes, and calling Gerry all the way in prison just to cry over the phone - that's about all you can consciously recall. Not your finest moments. Not your finest moments by a wide margin.

Despite the fact that you were sitting, combined, on over a million dollars of dirty money and by all means should have been happier than a pig rolling in shit, you both wanted to do nothing more than buy some rope and - 

"Jesus FUCK, Niko, give a guy a little warning!" Blood splatters right up onto your face. Niko is crouched over, just wailing on the guy, stabbing him in the chest and the gut and the neck. Much of it has splashed onto him, and small rivulets of blood trail down the side of his face. He's got a discontent look on his face, but his jaw is set in steely resolve, and you just watch. Stabbing ain't the way to go for something like this if you want it go clean, but erratic stabbing is the way the boss wanted it, so erratic stabbing it the way it's gonna continue to fuckin' go.

There's really not that much blood in the human body, but for some reason when even a fraction of it actually is out in the open, it always seems like so much more than should be possible. The body gurgles and groans. You doubt it's the guy regaining consciousness; it's likely just escaping air. 

You remember the first time you heard a dead guy moan. You were sixteen and helping Gerry bury some guy. You don't remember the details. You don't even know if you knew them then - Gerry only ever divulged what was absolutely necessary. He's a smart guy. It's a fucking shame he's in prison for pretty much life. But the two of you were down in some area in southern Alderney, above a beach, but not near residential areas. You don't actually know if you could find it if you tried - Alderney City is something you've got down, geographically, but Alderney State proper has always eluded you. The hole was at least six feet deep and took the two of you two and a half hours because the sandy soil kept caving in and fucking things up - about halfway through, you decided that dumping bodies in water was *clearly* the superior choice in disposal and haven't looked back since. Gerry got the body down, but he let you start shoveling dirt back over him, like it was some high and prestigious honor and not because he wanted to take a break and shotgun a beer. You ate that shit up. You started by nudging dirt down at the guy's feet, so it was a good five minutes before any dirt started trickling onto his chest. The low, scratchy groan that emanated from the grave when a three pound clump fell onto the guy's gut isn't something you were able to stop thinking about for two fucking weeks. Gerry only laughed when you jumped. 

You watch dispassionately as Niko continues, blood no longer spurting but instead just seeping, and then slowly step away and turn on your heels. You figure you should probably do something while he fucks the guy up, so you push some dining room chairs onto their sides and kick some stuff around. The goal is to make it look as though one or three opposing gang members broke in and killed the guy - had that been the reality, there'd be a scuffle. Might as well make it look like there was a scuffle. 

There's a pretty hefty paperweight sitting on the living room coffee table. It's round and glossy, like it's got some sort of lacquer finish. You pick it up and it feels solid in your hand.You imagine it'd feel even more solid sailing through the 40-inch flat-screen television hanging on the wall.

You wind up like a baseball pitcher and let it rip. Smoke and glass and dust go everywhere. It tickles your throat and you choke back a cough.

Niko makes a gagging sound and when you turn around he's standing back up. There's blood on his clothes and his shoes and his skin and his face. Images of Gerry pop in your mind - that night when he most definitely killed a man, or rolled around in an abattoir; the only difference is that instead of a harsh, glowered look, Niko is sporting one more resigned and reluctant. 

Things have changed a lot since that last week in Liberty City. You tell yourself they haven't, but you know they have. 

You let out a low, long whistle. "Well I'll be, Niko, that's about the deadest body I ever did see." It's a corpse, all right. Wholly holey, and you almost wanna say grace or some shit and make it holy, too. The pool of blood it - because that's all the guy is now; a soulless It, a shell - sits in is still slowly spreading, and the viscosity combined with the lighting makes you think of spilled cream. Dead as a doornail, all right. 

"Can we go now? Are we done here?" Niko shifts uncomfortably, his shoes squelching and looking quite soaked. You'll have to find some plastic bags or something in the house to cover his shoes - there's no use leaving the cops a trail leading out of the door. You already lined the seats of the boss's rental with plastic. You figured it'd get about this messy, and you also figured the boss would want his deposit back. 

"Just about." You dig around in the front pocket of your jeans until you locate a small, laminated slip of paper. It's glossy and reflects the distant blue-tinted kitchen lights, almost distracting you from the black insignia embossed on it. It's some gang sign - an enemy of your boss's group. Fucking Triads. All the same, the lot of them, and you don't mean that in the racist way - their goals are the same, they're from the same fuckin' place, and the only thing causing squabbles are petty shit and actions; at least in LC, there was a distinct difference between the Irish mob (god bless its collective souls), the Italians, and the (fucking) Russians. Here, it all feels the same. Maybe it's because you're the foreigner for once.

As dramatically as you can muster at two in the goddamn morning after not sleeping for what feels like days, as *ceremoniously* as possible after being blackmailed into killing some potentially innocent guy in his own fucking foyer, you drop the paper over the gaping slit in the guy's throat. The paper doesn't flutter. It just drops into the deep bordeaux, ending the night's events without a sound.

"All right, fuck. Let's get out of here."

\---

The night is sticky hot and humid; it's the type of heat that bears down on you, sticking to your skin and your clothes, lining your lungs and throat. You feel almost like a fuckin' amphibian, what with how heavy and damp the air feels on your arms. 

Niko smells like blood. He's sitting a little stiffly in the passenger seat of the car, keeping his hands firmly in his lap, staring straight ahead and out of the tinted windows. The thick acrid iron smell feels like it's actually what you're breathing in, almost, like you were the one who probably drowned in your own blood - not the Triad member. It's not exactly fucking pleasant. 

Niko keeps, despite his posture, shifting. The crinkling and moving of plastic - on the seat, on his feet - cuts through the silence like the knife through the guy's throat. Kind of morbid. Maybe it's more like a hot knife through butter. That certainly sounds better, at least out loud. 

Regardless of your inner monologue, you hit a red light and wrench your hand away from the wheel (your knuckles are white from gripping it so hard; god, driving is a bitch in this city), nudging the radio knob on. Radio Mirror Park blares full-blast through the speakers. You flinch so hard that were you actively driving, the car would have swerved. 

Niko moves his hand to turn it down for you, but falters halfway there, probably remembering that his hand is, despite how fast the blood dried, contaminated. You turn it down to a more reasonable level yourself, but don't change the station. It's far from your favorite, but Niko listens to it sometimes.

Once, he confided in you that since there was no eurotrash station in the city, this was the closest approximation. You didn't get it until he explained that if he only half-listened, half of the slurring and mumbling almost, ALMOST sounded like it could be a European language of some sort. That sentiment has ruined every hipster song for you, and did you not already have a low opinion of the genre, you might have been a little upset. 

The light turns green and you slam your foot on the gas pedal as hard as you can. It's a game you and Niko have - or at least you assume it is; you've never actually talked about it out loud. The rules are simple: drive as recklessly as possible, and if the passenger complains, then they lose. 

...Maybe it's just a game you play with yourself, now that you think about it. 

"We need to talk," Niko says delicately as you merge onto the eastbound highway. 

"Yeah, all right. You're probably right."

You glance over. He's still looking out the window, but his crossed arms are tight, and his right hand is twitching. The elephant in this particular room is deep red and staining the plastic covers of the seats.

"When we came to this city, we both wanted it to be a fresh start. A new page. An opportunity to live life as legitimately as possible. I am just wondering how you could not last even two months before getting us sucked back into this life." He says it not unkindly, but the way the accusation sinks into your ears stings worse than a smack to the face.

You falter for a moment. "It's not the life. We're just doing some favors."

"This is the sixth favor, and by my estimation, they're only getting worse, Packie."

There's a dozen things you could say, but you're not sure that you know what direction you want the conversation to take. "We'll clean it up. I'll talk to him after this. I've got enough dirt on the guy to leave clean, I think. I already fucking quit the job I was hired to do - I don't think he was expecting me to stay on staff for much longer." When the two of your arrived in LS, after those two weeks you really can't remember, you both went out and got jobs. Honest fucking jobs, or at least as honest as a criminal and an illegal immigrant can get. Niko, admittedly, has got forged papers - you dealt with that back in your last week in the big city, but you kind of doubt they'd stand up to anything serious. 

He got a job as a cabbie. You don't know why - you would imagine it'd hurt too much, given the circumstances of his cousin and his profession; maybe it was a way of paying homage to the dead, or maybe it was the only thing he thought he could do well enough. You don't know. You haven't asked. You, on the other hand, took your mother's fuckin' advice for once and got the easiest job to acquire in the world. For an entire goddamn month, you slaved away in the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant, washing dishes. So many dishes. So many fucking dishes. 

It just kind of turned out that your boss was the king of a small-time gang. So, there's that. Big mistake. 

"Can you? Because the way I see this fucking going is, is, is like this." His voice raises just a little bit, and his accent becomes thicker, the way it always does when he's angry or scared or both. Neither of you used to get scared that much, but that was before --

"Enlighten me."

"You try and back out. Mr. Big Triad Guy sends a hit on you. We end up having to kill him. Guess what? He's probably just a fucking figurehead or something - and there's going to be a guy above him who we'll have to deal with! There's always a guy higher up! The only time we've ever actually dealt with the guys on top, they -" He abruptly stops and cringes inward, as if a hot poker was waved in his face. As if needles cut into his tongue. As if he pressed his entire body against the third rail, which, yeah, he kind of fucking did.

"Yeah, say it, Niko boy. Remind me of that. Remind me of how your aspirations and mistakes and shit killed her. Killed both of - both of 'em. You know, I was just starting to fuckin' forgive you for that." Now you're just being catty. Some days you blame him, some days you don't; his choices are what ultimately killed Kate and Roman, but you can cop some of the blame, too, and a lot of it wasn't exactly in his hands. Forgiveness is not something to wave in his face.

You probably would have made the same choice, were you in his shoes. You probably would have overlooked the same things he did. God knows you're not a fucking Einstein when the chips are on the table and you're dealing in anger. He's paid for his actions - you see the coldness and grief in his eyes every day. It drips out of him like pus from a festering boil, and the guilt weighs on him like a casket. Enough that his shoulders practically bow from the pressure every day. He's far from being the same man he was in Liberty City.

You hate him sometimes, but you also love him - you love him enough to understand that how he feels is enough. 

Niko goes silent once the words leave your mouth. You hear his breathing quicken marginally and so you turn the radio up louder, loud enough to drown out the sounds of his grief-stricken breathing, the sounds of the road, the sounds of the car, and the sounds of your sorrow-soddened mind. 

\---

The house you share isn't actually a house. It's a duplex over by Vespucci Beach, and the both of you inhabit the second story suite. The area could be nicer, but it's close enough to where you need to be with the added attribute of being relatively close to the beach (and consequently within walking distance of the constantly shifting drug dealer hotspots). It fetches about two grand a month - it is a good thing you're sitting on a nest egg, because otherwise your two shit tier jobs wouldn't be able to comfortably cover that plus living expenses.

Coke counts as a fucking living expense. End of story. 

Initially, you wanted to get a place up in the Vinewood Hills. You spent six hours trying to coax Niko into it. You've got the dough (to at least cover it for a while) - but Niko dismissed it every time. Too flashy, he said. Too unnecessary. You know he only declined because long term, you'd have to either become a fucking politician or get back into the game to pay for it. It hardly seems to fuckin' matter these days, though. 

To think, you could be living it up in a Vinewood mansion right now - you could be doing rails off of marble countertops and watching the city lights through floor to ceiling windows; instead, you're sitting on a stained couch and staring listlessly out past the balcony, listening to the sounds of the running shower. How fucking quaint. 

It's probably what you deserve, though. 

After the conversation - if you could really even call it that - in the car, Niko remained silent. You didn't say anything, either; the tension in the car became heavier and more stifling than the humidity and smell of blood. You dropped the car off in the backlot of the restaurant and left the keys in the mailbox, and then got right the fuck outta there. 

This is Niko's second shower. He had given you the pile of stained clothes and entrusted you with dealing with them, and when you came back from dumping them off the Del Perro Pier, he was still in the shower and there was a trail of wet footprints leading to the alcohol cupboard and back.

You feel a little guilty for making him feel bad, and a little guilty for goading him into doing your dirty work. Your boss - ex-boss? - didn't blackmail Niko, after all. He wasn't the one caught with a gram of coke falling out of his back pocket in the middle of the dinner rush. He's the one who insisted, though, out of the goodness of his own black sullied heart that you work as a single unit. A set. A pair. A team

He didn't verbalize it, but you know the nature of his motives. He doesn't want to lose another person. If he's there, then he can protect you. He can at least try. In another life, maybe, you'd be offended - after all, you're twenty-nine years old (going on thirty in March, sweet fucking Christ) and a grown-ass man; you can hold your own in a firefight for God's sake. But times have changed. You're different now, too - and the truth is that you feel the same way about him. There's a reason you text him every hour. There's a reason you feel a small jolt of discomfort whenever he doesn't pick his phone up the first time you call. There's a fucking reason why you live in the same goddamn house like an old married couple. There's safety in numbers, and there's safety in being together. Kate and Roman weren't with anyone when It happened. You weren't there to help your sister, and he wasn't there to help his cousin. Nobody was.

God, today fucking sucks. It's going on four in the morning but you aren't up for sleeping yet. You wonder if Niko is. 

As if on cue, the shower stops running. You wait for the door to open, but after about two minutes, you hear something - a curse, likely - in Serbian, and the water starts up anew. 

Niko tried teaching your some Serbian once, but it never stuck - mostly because he only ever tried when the both of you were plastered to the point of falling over. The depth of your language skills are English and a 10th grade Spanish course (that you failed); really, the fact that Niko knows so many goddamn dialects and languages in kind of amazing. Granted, Serbian is awful similar to Russian and all of that slavic shit, but Dutch is allegedly close to English, and you don't even know how to say hello in that. 

You kind of wish you could speak Gaelic or something. Your family has always toted their Irish roots - you being the worst of the lot - but the only one in your direct family who's even been is your poor fuckin' mother and your poor fuckin' dead brother. Derrick could speak some mean Gaelic, which is to say he had the basics down well enough - hello, fuck off, I'd like a beer, etc. He could also dabble in Spanish and Italian and the like; you figure he just had better innate language skills than you. 

Someday, you're going to learn Irish proper. Someday you'll even GO there - it's just that the wounds are too fresh right now. Kate always said she'd tag along with you whenever you finally got the balls and record clean enough to internationally travel. You'd just suffer the whole time were you to go now, and besides, Niko probably wouldn't be able to go either, anyway. You're not too keen on the idea of abandoning him in LS right now. 

Codependence? Maybe. It's not your main concern right now. 

Your phone buzzes in your pocket. Long gone are the days of obnoxious ringtones and annoying beats; you've resigned to your old age and keep it on vibrate, save for calls. Clearly, being nearly thirty has given you the wisdom of the world. 

1 UNREAD MESSAGE  
FROM: boss guy man  
(04:12) good work. i will call you when i need your service again. 

Fuck, might as well cut the umbilical cord now, while you still have the nerve.

TO: boss guy man  
(04:12) Yeah, about that. I think we're even. You'll have to get a new dishwasher, if you catch my drift.

1 UNREAD MESSAGE  
FROM: boss guy man  
(04:14) i do not catch your drift. 

TO: boss guy man  
(04:15) I'm saying I'm out. I can't keep doing this stuff for you. Tonight got messy. I'm exiting before I become implicit in any more crimes. 

1 UNREAD MESSAGE  
FROM: boss guy man  
(04:20) reconsider this. i pay well. tell me your answer tomorrow.

Well, fuck. That's not exactly the answer you want to fuckin' hear. 

The shower turns off. That's, what, three showers? You hope he's clean. It's your turn to clean the bathroom this week, and you only hope that he had the decency to not get blood every which way. 

He wanders out of the bathroom soon enough, a towel around his waist, and stops at the liquor cupboard. You watch in rapt silence as he takes a swig of vodka straight from the handle itself. You don't know how he does it, but more importantly, you keep forcing yourself to stare at his HAIR and not, you know, the hand clutching the towel, or the myriad of scars lining his sides and back and arms and legs, or the gentle curve of his spine and how it meets his hips, or the the way his stupidly chapped lips meet the bottle, or --

Argh. You have a weird relationship with him - even pre-Incident, it was leaning towards...something decidedly not strictly platonic. You don't know where you stand, though. He's not your boyfriend, and you don't know if that's - if that's something you want. You're a player. Definitely. Never mind the fact that you haven't gotten any action in two months and feel like you're gonna explode. Los Santos just hasn't gotten a taste of your wiles and charm yet. 

Niko sets the bottle down and it makes an unsettling clunk. He sort of cringes and shakes his head, leaning away from what you know must be a lighter-fluid taste - you're more of a classic Irish whiskey guy yourself, but it fuckin' figures that he'd fall onto stereotypes, too. The lot of you are a right and proper pair of cliches.

"Hey," you call, and he doesn't turn around. "You enjoy your shower...s? Must have been running cold by the end there."

"I still smell iron," he says grimly, and heads back to his bedroom.

"Leave the door open, I wanna fuckin' talk to you."

He does comply, though. You can't see anything from where you are sitting. Not that you'd want to. Definitely not. 

Fuck, you need to get laid. Go out out to Pillbox Hill and find some pretty girl in a bar with dark hair and hazel eyes and an accent or-

Yeah, no, it's best to cut that fantasy off now before it gets out of hand. 

"I texted the boss," you say, twiddling your fingers.

"And?"

"Told him I'm out of the game."

"Is he on his way to kill us right now, as we speak? Should I pack my bags?"

"Oh, hardee-fucking-har-har. No. He hasn't replied yet. He's like, fifty or some shit - goes to bed around nine in the evening, probably. I'll keep you updated." The lie feels bitter and jagged against your teeth, but you think it's the best thing to say right now. 

If he's gonna pay well, you're not too sure that you should back out, because here's the thing Niko doesn't understand about you - crime is literally in your blood. Full stop. The McRearys have been rucking and fucking and stealing and plotting since the Great Depression, when the fresh immigrants got sick of the Italians sweeping in wealth while everyone else suffered. They killed and mobbed and did all sorts of fucked up things, and you're goddamn convinced it's just in your DNA. Take Frankie - he tried and tried and tried to get away from it, but you know that at his core, he's just a grade-A prime McReary specimen. Why in the world should you expect yourself to be any different?

There's no such thing as going straight as a McReary man. You wonder if it's even worth trying anymore. 

"Hmm," is all Niko says. "Hmm."

\---

LIBERTY CITY, LATE 2008

So, here's the thing: You're not gay. 

Gay guys like dick, and guys, and gay stuff. You don't like gay stuff. You like women, and pussy, and cheap beer. The logic makes sense, right?

Niko just happens to be the exception. You don't know what it is about the guy - it's probably the fact that he understands you in a way that nobody else ever really has...But that sounds fruity in itself, so maybe you just like him because...of...the way he...looks?

Fuck, no, that's gay too. Argh. The fact, you know, is that there's nothing NOT fruity about liking a dude. That kind of comes with the deal. It's in the papers. When you sign on the dotted line, it ain't even in the fine print - it's right at the very top; WARNING: ENGAGING IN ANY HOMOSEXUAL BEHAVIOR, REGARDLESS OF MANNER, IS INNATELY FRUITY. And yet you fuckin' signed the line anyway, right in bulletproof ink. Like some kind of CHUMP. 

One thing that's worked out, though, is that you're pretty dang sure he kind of wants to fuck you, too. It's subtle. Everything about him is subtle - but you know bedroom eyes when you see them, and the way he leans back into your touch ever-so-slightly is unmistakable. You've fucked a lot of women (yeah, sure, brag it up Packie, everyone’s listening), and with them, the signs are all the same. They're different with Niko, but you still recognize them, because you've done the very same things yourself. It's like watching yourself, in some ways. 

Everything sort of peaks the night of Roman's wedding. It was a nice affair, really. Kate was pissed at Niko for "betraying his own convictions" or something like that; God, you love her, but she can be the most pretentious bitch sometimes, God bless her heart. He dragged you along instead. 

You kind of wonder what went on between them. So far as you know, they've only ever been with eachother as friends. Kate don't put out. Sometimes you wonder if she's a lesbian. It would make a lot of sense, but she also did have a boyfriend in junior high for a month, so maybe you're just looking into it too much. Too hopefully. If she was gay, then it'd be okay for you to have occasional gay endeavors too, right? God, if Gerry or Francis ever found out...you'd never hear the end of it. The term bisexuality has just never occurred to you in a serious light, even in regards to other people; your thinking is far too black and white for that.

But the wedding, the wedding was nice. Tasteful. You've got a big family, too, so you've been to as many weddings as you have funerals. Everyone used to want the head of the Irish mob and his family to attend their goddamn ceremony. Roman's was one of the less grating ones.

The reception was even better, mostly because there was an open bar. You ain't a McReary if you aren't nearly pissing yourself with excitement at the sight of an open bar. The music kept oscillating between Spanish and European crap, but by the time you were decently smashed, you're pretty sure you heard some good ol' fashioned rock n' roll. Or maybe not. When you're smashed, it's pretty easy to hear things wrong. 

You're about five drinks in when Niko pulls himself away from the general festivities of his cousin and rejoins your little table. He's got a sway in his step and has since undone his tie and unbuttoned the top of his shirt. A hint of hair pokes out. You can feel yourself begin to sweat. 

"Patrick," he says, pulling a chair out and sitting down. He's got his legs splayed out and has got the biggest, goofiest grin you think you've ever seen him wear. He looks like a fucking prince. "Where've you been?"

"Me? The fuckin' *bar*, mostly. The dude they got workin' it makes the best black Russians I think I've ever had, 'n I don't even think the guy's Russian."

He laughs all big and jovially; you don't like vodka that much but they don't got whiskey here, so you might as well get in the Eastern European spirit. "Isn't that just vodka and some..." He falters for a moment, moving his hands as he thinks. "Er...Coffee liqueur?" He pronounces it lick-ere, like he's never heard the word before. It's kind of cute. He's kind of really cute right now. You don't think you've ever seen him smile this much. 

Sometimes, you wonder what he was like before the war - but that's still a dumb thing to wonder, because you know his shitty childhood fucked him up early. There's likely no iteration of Niko Bellic that is mentally healthy and sound - no incarnation except the blitzed out one in front of you that's making your heart beat a little too fast for someone who hasn't had rail in over a week. 

"Liqueur," you say pointedly, pronouncing it right. "Learn the damn language, Niko." It's in jest and both of you know it. "But yeah, and some ice, and probably spit or magic fairy dust. Whatever the guy's doin', though, it's good."

He nods and nods and nods, like an excited puppy. It's strange, the juxtaposition between killer Niko and drunk, happy Niko; one is comparable to a hunting lion, all fangs and shadows and survival instincts, and one is a fluffy bouncing Golden Retriever. Quite a difference. At least you're consistent. 

"Roman and Mallorie are havin' a good time?"

"Yes, yes. I'm just - " He exhales, big and loud. "Can you believe that Roman is going to be a father?"

"Yeah, but I'm kinda surprised it's with Mallorie and not some random chick he met at - at a bar."

"Ahh, fuck you. My cousin is golden these days. He's going - he's going to be such a great father. Much better than either of ours. I am so excited for him."

He usually doesn't mention his childhood willingly like that. You can't help but to wonder how much he's had to drink. Possibly even more than you, and that is a fucking FEAT. 

He babbles and babbles and babbles, and you listen, like the good friend you are. His eyes - hazel, like those dark teas your sister likes - are so warm and so pleasurable to just look at. You try not to look at his lips, but you notice that he keeps looking at yours. 

It's pretty much all over at that point. 

Two hours later, the reception breaks up, and the two of you leave together. You've both kept your buzz but when you close the door to the neon orange Comet he breaks out for special occasions, you realize there's a charged tension in the air. It's heavy on your skin and heavy on your neck, like sweat made of lead. 

It's familiar, a tension you’ve felt before. The tension before a girl begins grinding on you in a bar, or before she grabs your dick back in the alley (hey, don’t judge). That sort of tension is unmistakable. It's raw and powerful and clings to you like the static before a thunderstorm. It’s perhaps a bit lighter with Niko, more casual; but it’s still tension nonetheless.

"Want to hang out at my place for another drink or two?" The intent could not be clearer. 

"Beats the hell out of listenin' to Kate mope about how she wished she - wished she woulda went to the wedding with you. Fuck, she *loves* weddings. Dunno why she made that choice. Dunno why she was so wrapped up in her own convictions."

"I am glad she was," he says, and he side eyes you, shooting you A Look. It's not the sort that says Hey, You're A Good Friend And Tonight Was Nice. It's a look that very plainly says I Have Been Wanting To Make Out With You All Night, You Goddamn Irish Bastard. For once, you're positive you're not misinterpreting his expression. You're fuckin' positive.


	2. part ii: dance with wolves in a pack of lies

LOS SANTOS, EARLY 2009  
NIKO

These days, you tend to wake up one of three ways. These three ways are broken into different ways within ways, because you are a complex man living a complex life. Keep up. 

Oftentimes, it's nightmares. They were bad enough before What Happened, and would range from childhood abuse replays to warzone flashbacks. You usually wake up in a cold sweat, or by falling off of your bed from trying to fight back. Once, you somehow managed to punch yourself in your own face. You don't even want to know how you pulled that one off. Ever since What Happened, though, their themes tend to run more familial and grisly. Waking up shouting, trembling, and/or in tears has become the norm for those dreams. To say you hate them is an understatement. Sometimes, as you lie in a pool of your own icy sweat, you fantasize about giving yourself a lobotomy - of somehow finding the exact part of your brain that holds your memories, or at least Those memories, and just hacking it away, like cutting fat from a piece of meat or decay from a limb. 

Sometimes, it's just your alarm. Those days are blissful. 

Usually - rather, more often than not - it's Packie. Most things in your life these days have come to revolve around him. When you first laid eyes on him in that Puerto Rican coke dealer's house, you never would have guessed his scrawny ass would end up being such a prominent figure in your life. 

It usually goes one of two ways. You either wake up from the cre-e-e-ak of the door opening in the middle of the night, or you wake up from his weight settling on the bed and shifting the blankets. His night time visits aren't really something you necessarily look forward to - sometimes he is crying his eyes out, all coked up and drunk and *miserable* - and other times he is just listless and mourning. You end up holding him either way. It calms him down better than anything else you've tried, and eventually, he falls asleep. Sleep doesn't come easy to you after that - between the snoring and the raw, biting feeling in your stomach, it sometimes takes hours, if it even happens at all.

It's a form of penance. It is, on so many levels, you fault that What Happened happened. It's your fault that he comes into your room and moans about how badly he wants to die and about how both of your souls are fucked to the point of no return; it's your fault that he lost a sister and you lost your only family; it is your fault that things are the way they are. It's difficult to live with. Some days, you can hardly bear it. The weight of your sins...they hold you down like shackles. 

Things have changed. You changed with them, and so did Packie.

But for once - for once in a very, very long time - you wake up to none of the usual stimuli. It's the morning after the stabbing; after you took your three showers and drank some liquor, you went to bed and crashed *hard*. You don't know when Packie went to bed. Sometimes he'll stay up late watching television, or sometimes he’ll go out. It makes you nervous, knowing that a drug deal or a pro deal could turn wrong in a heartbeat, and that you're not there to fix it --

(He's a grown man and can handle himself, but that's what Roman always said about himself, too.)

\-- but it is what it is, and the less you think about it, the easier you can rest. 

An unfathomably bad smell drifts into your bedroom around nine in the morning, stirring you from your groggy slumber. The smell is bad enough that it completely distracts you from the lingering iron - it seems to be a mixture of strong coffee, burning, and cough syrup. In your half-asleep state, though, it just smells bad. Worse than the time in Broker when Roman tried making breakfast, but the eggs were rotten and-

"Niko boy," Packie says from your doorway, and with a groan you pull yourself into a sitting position. The world is still bleary and fuzzy this soon after waking up. You rub your eyes until things feel clear again. "Wakey-wakey, sunshine."

He's leaning against the doorframe in that faux-casual way he seems to do everything (oh, but you know everything he does is carefully calculated - you know better), fully dressed with a mug of something in his hand. You have no doubt in your mind that that is the source of the stench, and when he takes a sip of it, you notice that is it a deep umber and the consistency of sewage sludge.

It's too early for this. It's just too early for this. You don't know if you can deal. 

"What is that." It comes out as more of a statement than a question. 

"Oh, this?" He swirls the mug around nonchalantly, but for some reason, you doubt that the "beverage" inside is affected at all by the motions. "Little pick-me-up. Some coffee, some more coffee, some coffee again, some energy drinks, some Crocorade... Nothing but the hits. There's enough left in the pot if you want some, you know."

"Hard pass."

"You're missing out on a hell of an experience, Niko. Caffeine is one hell of a drug."

Something about the twitchiness of his hands makes you wonder how long he has been up and how many cups he has already drank/chewed/slurped. Packie, like any good McReary boy, is nothing but irresponsible and self-destructive at heart. With the sheer amount of coffee he drinks daily, combined with his still too-frequent coke usage, you're completely shocked that his non-metaphorical heart hasn't given out yet. He once told you that he didn't expect to "make old bones," but that he'd like to make it to thirty - he's nearly there, but sometimes, you wonder how long he's going make it after that. 

"Still, hard pass." You stretch, lazily, and your back cracks a bit. You feel so stiff these days. It's probably the stress. You used to get stiff joints back when you were still working the Adriatic for Bulgarin, but not in the merchant’s navy or on the Platypus - clearly, you've become spoiled. 

"Fine, fine, whatever." He takes another drink and sort of sputters a bit - "That… was a chunk. Anyway. We're going up to Paleto Bay today."

"Can I ask why?" If it's a fucking job, you're going to strangle him and then yourself. Possibly with your own entrails. You have not decided yet. 

Maybe not that extreme. But you will certainly be displeased, and make every effort to make that displeasure known. Things can't keep going this way. You just want - 

("Cousin, I cannot wait for you to quit your bullshit crime spree and work for me! I swear, with your driving and my brain, we'll rule the transportation world of this city! Bellic and Bellic - heh, I can almost see myself renaming it to that.")

\-- to be normal. To live a normal life. To try, for once, to see what it's like. 

"Coupla reasons. One, you ever been up there?"

"No."

"Fuckin' wild, man - not even once? Never had even ONE passenger who demanded that you drove five or six hours up there?"

"I can't say that is has ever happened."

"Man. Two, I figured we should lie a bit low in, ah, wake of last night. Just a precaution. Lastly, I kinda wanna just get the fuck outta here, you know? Change up the scenery for a day." He bounces on his heels in a jittery sort of way. "I already packed your shit - it's in the car, man, ready to go. Just get dressed and meet me downstairs, yeah?" He doesn't give you time to ask any questions or allow you to complain; he leaves the door and you are left with the sickening smell and the sound of him slurping the rest of ‘it’ in the distance. 

Packie is a very strange man. You suppose you are too, and that is why the two of you are able to tolerate each other so well - but he is still strange nonetheless, and there are many times where you are unable to decipher the exact nature of his intentions. His brothers weren't like that. Derrick was a paranoid junkie. Francis was a corrupt cop looking to save his own ass. Gerry was a lynchpin, and he looked out for his operations just as much as he looked out for himself - but he, his family, and the final payout were always at the top of his mind. With Packie, it is at any point a toss up at best. Sometimes he is selfish. Sometimes he is selfless. Usually, his desires are simple, but his actions are complex, and he surprises you almost constantly. 

You spend a few minutes getting dressed. Your fashion has had to change drastically since the big move - thick coats and sweaters and jackets don't exactly work when the average temperature is in the upper 80s every day. You refuse to show your legs or your arms. The scars are worse on your back and torso, but there are still some on your limbs, and they tend to draw attention. What's perhaps more important, though, is that having short sleeves or short pants makes you feel vulnerable - exposed. Even in your youth, you would wear covering clothes in the summers. You've always been that way. You wear a lot of thin layers these days, and it works. Packie flawlessly pulls off the vaguely grunge hipster look that so much of Los Santos deals with, but if you come within ten feet of a pair of skinny jeans or a flannel shirt, it spontaneously bursts into flames. You make do with jackets, thin sweaters, and bootcut jeans. It's a shame yesterday's outfit was fucked, but it's not as if you don't have the money to buy new ones.

When you get downstairs (after turning the lights off, dumping the coffee sludge down the sink [though perhaps the toilet would have been a better bet],, and locking the door), Packie is sitting in his car nodding his head along with the radio station. 

You had to leave your cars back in a garage in LC - you asked Florian to watch them, given that he was one of the few associates you had that wasn't a junkie or a criminal, but in all honesty that just means they've probably already been stolen. Packie sold his Comet and used the payoff to buy something decent when you landed in the City of Saints. The lucky car ended up being a 2003 cream colored Feltzer convertible, which was a definite downsize from the Comet, but it's flashy enough that he is content. You used to see old white people driving them with the tops down back in the city, even when the temperatures dropped to 50. The things the wealthy do to demonstrate their status will never cease to amaze you. 

The top is down, so you can hear the shitty 70s rock humming out of the speakers. Los Santos Rock Radio is nearly indistinguishable from Liberty City Rock, but then again, that hipster station you kind of like is nearly indistinguishable from Radio Broker. The irony of hipster music all being the same doesn't go over your head. 

"Hurry up, Niko," Packie calls, drawling out the last syllable of your name. You've been up for ten minutes, and you really wish he'd cool his caffeine-addled jets. 

First, you check the trunk to verify Packie's claim. There's three duffel bags, which is probably about one more than is really necessary for a night away from home. You almost think it's weird, but then the reality that it's just a cementation of yet another one of Packie's quirks sets in. He's so materialistic these days. The armchair psychologist in you says it's because he's had everything ripped away from him, and now he clings to what he has left, but the asshole in you just thinks his mother took his favorite blankie away from him too early. 

You slam the trunk shut and get in the car. Before you can even close the door, Packie peels out of the driveway. You just barely manage to get it shut before you speed down the road, tires smoking and squealing and probably annoying half of the neighbors. 

"We're gonna take the Great Ocean Highway," Packie says a little louder than is likely necessary, as if he's preparing to have to accommodate for the loudness of being on the the highway itself. "I refuse to go through the fuckin' desert. All that's up there is meth-heads and cougars, and I don't mean the sexy kind. We'll stick to the coast - there's plenty of gas stations and shit."

You nod. The weather is cool, given the earliness of the day - a downright pleasant 75 or so. You know it'll heat up. There's clouds covering much of the sky for now, but that could change fast. The weather tends to change fast in these parts. It's probably the pollution. It's so bad sometimes that when you wake up, you can't tell if it's dawn or dusk based on the lighting alone - it's always orange or pink, and sometimes, depending on where you are in the city, the smog is so thick that it blots out parts of the sky. It is a stark contrast from the memories of your youth. 

"You can take the wheel up near Chumash or something. I don't know. We'll play it by ear. Fort Zancudo - you know, that big fuckin' military base - is on the way, so don't be shootin' nobody from the car, all right Niko?"

"Wow. I will definitely have a very hard time accomplishing that, Packie," you deadpan, and he snickers. You continue, "Isn't Zancudo the one with the aliens?"

"Now, now, that's not proven - but yes, that's the one. A prominent base in good old fashioned American pop culture. Good thing neither of us are aliens."

You sense that he’s trying to do a bit, and start, "Well, technically -"

Louder, Packie says, "Good thing neither of us are aliens," and jerks the car over as he merges onto the freeway. Or is it highway? There are so many English words that have similar meanings. You should have just learned road and stuck with that. He turns the radio up loud, and that is that. 

\---

LIBERTY CITY, LATE 2008

So, here's the thing - you're not gay. 

Your sexuality is not something you think horribly much about. There is no great conflict like you have observed so many others having - you are simply you, and you have mostly heterosexual tendencies. There's the occasional diversion from that path, but you're mostly on the straight and narrow. 

There's a word for it. You just keep forgetting it. Labels have never appealed to you all that much - whether it be your sexuality, your political orientation, or anything else; knowing as many languages as you do has given you the perspective that names for things are subjective and at times exhausting. 

Roman has been goading you about finally settling down and getting together with someone, even though he himself has been married about three days. It's kind of funny in that classic annoying-charismatic way that seems exclusive to Roman's personality, so you let it slide and let him make fun of you. 

You don't plan on telling him about Packie any time soon. 

The two of you have a thing going on, a thing that you have yet to speak about - truth be told, you don't actually know when it definitively started. Your friendship just sort of morphed into it naturally and gradually, but if you're being honest with yourself, you had a thing for him from the start. The wedding was just the first time either of you acknowledged it.

It's usually not looks that make you like people. Of course, you are only human; you do have physical weaknesses, and girls with short hair drive you wild - but things that are worth pursuing only ever make themselves clear when you realize someone has substance. Not just a personality, but something within them. Something that you can connect to, or something you want to understand. Too many people are boring or dull or stumble through life, accepting choices as they are given them. Even you've been guilty of it. 

It's a...morose observation, but an observation nonetheless - you've noticed that those who have been through trauma or adversity of some sort tend to be different. Different in a way that you mesh with, and it's likely because you can relate. 

You don't know. You don't think about this stuff much - what you do think about is the stupid smirk Packie gave after he met you, and how it turned into a full blown toothy grin when he made it out of the deal alive. You think about the way he instantly decided that you - you, someone who deals only in death - was not only his guardian angel, but a fucking prince, at that. You think about how he looks at you and so willingly spills his guts, as if he genuinely and literally trusts you - as if you're someone who could be genuinely and literally trusted with that sort of information. You think about what a horrible and stupidly broken person he is, and how you are also a horrible and stupidly broken person, and maybe, just maybe, your shattered edges could fit together like the cosmos' most miserable puzzle.

You guess that he makes your inner monologue wax a bit pretentious and poetic at times. It's embarrassing, but it's a good thing he likes poetry. 

It's three days after the wedding and the reception and you're still thinking about that night - when you took him back to your place in Northwood. Your hands were nearly shaking when you drove home, you remember, and you could feel a perpetual blush creeping around your ears, like you were a thirteen year old virgin school boy about to brush hands with the girl of his dreams. You were embarrassed until Packie told you it was cute. The way he said it - 'cute' - didn't make you feel weird, like you did all the other times girls have called you that. You don't know why.

The two of you didn't sleep together. That was just fine. You don't know if that's what you wanted that night, ultimately, and you're not sure if that would be the best route for your friendship-turned-whatever it is now. You just made out on your couch until Kate texted Packie to get home, and once he was gone, you felt a lot like a teenager caught holding his dick - but again, you couldn't say why. 

His lips were chapped and he tasted like coffee liqueur, but it was incredibly enjoyable nonetheless. 

He makes you feel something you haven't felt in a long time - it feels a lot like your first crush, only now with the wisdom and priorities of a thirty year old ex-hired gun; instead of dreaming of holding his hands, you're thinking about how he can stay in your life and whether or not he'll be a good lay. 

(And, well, holding his hands, but that's somehow more embarrassing of a thought to entertain than the one about fucking him.)

You're sitting in the front seat of one of Roman's old cabs - those four seaters wanna be beaters that have grown so much on you - waiting for your phone to go off. It's nerve-wracking. It's likely from the nature of the text --

TO: Packie  
(19:16) Want to go get drunk?

You spent fifteen minutes crafting that bad boy. It's far from perfect, but it's a lot better than one of the three hundred word rough drafts. You're not a wordsmith. You're just some Serbian guy who's trying to navigate the warzone of potential romance. 

It takes six more minutes for your phone to buzz in response, and you nearly drop the phone from fumbling too much. 

1 UNREAD MESSAGE  
FROM: Packie  
(19:28) Hell yeah, man. Pick me up from my ma's in the next hour. 

You wonder if it took him the entire duration of that time to write a response, or if you are unique in your hesitancy. 

\---

LOS SANTOS, EARLY 2009

You've been on the road for two hours when Packie begins fidgeting and strumming the steering wheel and passing cars that are already going ten over the speed limit. 

You turn the radio down and say over the sound of the wind, "What's up?"

"Nothin'. Just thinkin'." You can spot a lie a mile away, at least when it's coming out of Packie's mouth. It just sounds fishy. Doesn't smell it, and even if it did, you can't smell anything over the wafts of ocean breeze and occasional residual whiff of blood. You wonder if the latter is psychosomatic. It probably is.

"Do you want to..." The words come out of you a tad strained. "...talk about it?" You know it wasn't the right thing to say the second it left your lips, but the way he sort of curls in on himself and scowls only confirms it.

"Oh, shit, we should probably get gas." He swerves suddenly, far too suddenly to be considered even remotely safe, and - 

Well, you're thrown around a lot, but you end up parked in a small, unassuming gas station at one of their two pumps. Packie jumps out of the side - jumps, mind you; he does not open the door - and begins loudly considering what type of gas to get. You take all of this as a long and drawn out way of saying no to what you had asked. 

While he narrates his thoughts on the topics of leaded vs unleaded gas, despite that having not been an option for well over either of your lifetimes, you shift a little in the seat, trying to get comfortable. Maybe you'll stretch your legs. You're still a little bit tired. 

"I've gotta go in and pay. You want anything?"

"Not really."

"Cool." He jogs out of sight, out of mind, and into the gas station. You begin to feel a little fidgety yourself. 

There is, after all, an awful lot to be fidgety about these days. The conversation the two of you almost had last night very briefly flashes into your mind, but you cast it away before the sickly sensation of emotions can get their clawed grip on you. You unbuckle and rebuckle your seatbelt restlessly, open and shut the console between the front seats, and open the glove compartment. There's a 9mm pistol and a pack of gum in there that you weren't aware of. You shut the compartment and lean back in your seat, resigning yourself to boredom and your own thoughts.

You and Packie have a weird relationship. You always have, even before What Happened happened. Friends or faux lovers? It seemed to be going in that direction, but when everything tumbled down around you, your relationship - in its less platonic form - was put on hold. In some ways, it is almost as if the two of you were changed together by it. Like it smashed you into pieces, but when you tried to glue yourself back together, you accidentally took a piece of him and vice versa. You'd have to smash yourself all over again to get him out. 

Speaking of - he pops back into view; he actually opens the door when he slides into the car, and tosses a plastic bag into your lap.

"Got you some stuff. The blue Crocorade is mine, though." He twists the key and soon after that the car shoots forward, and you are yet again a victim to his shitty and reckless driving. 

You pilfer through the bag. There's two bottles of caffeine-free energy-type drinks (their labels boast that they are HIGH in ELECTROLYTES, whatever the fuck that means) and about ten dollars of candy and snacks. You can too easily imagine Packie walking into the gas station and setting the two drinks on the counter, and upon being asked if that's all, scooping up an armful candy from the nearest display and wordlessly setting it down.

There's some chocolate, though, which is nice, even though American chocolate is absolute shit. It pales in comparison to the stuff back in Europe, but you usually power through it anyway. It is your dirty little secret. 

You hand Packie his drink. It's not until you're halfway through a Meteorite Bar that he loudly, loudly, LOUDLY sighs and begins strumming his fingers on the steering wheel. 

"What are you gonna do about Mallorie's kid?"

You stop swallow hard. Jagged half-chewed bits of peanuts scrape the back of your throat. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, are you going to go back to LC in a coupla months and try to father the damn thing." It comes out flat and hard. 

"I...don't know. I have not put much thought into it." 

He looks at you and gives you a grade-A judgemental McReary Look, one that, as per all of his Looks, cannot be misinterpreted as anything other than his intent. His face exudes such a raw sense of "I call bullshit" that it is nigh inescapable. 

"Okay, well, I suppose a better way of saying it is that I have not come to any definite conclusions." You look away, out the rolled-down window and off to the other cars. "She told me she never wanted to see me again. She may very well still feel that way. I want to see this child - this last piece of Roman - but I also do not think it is fair of me to put myself in its life when I bring nothing but misery."

"Well. Like. I wouldn't say that, dude." He sighs and runs his fingers through his short, stubbly hair. Both of you have neglected to get haircuts since the move. It's just another little piece of life that's slipped away in the chaos of things. You never really realized that he has ginger hair, and thinking back at how many times he mentioned his Irish heritage, you feel a little dumb for not realizing it. It always looked so much duller and less noticeable when it was buzzed short.

You think about what he said, and you respond the only way you feel as though you can --

"I deal in death." It's an echo of a long since stated sentiment. 

"Not misery, though. Those things don't always gotta go together." He's still scratching at his hair and his head and the back of his neck, but not feverishly - just casually and absentmindedly. 

"Still. I...I know there is a part of me that will not rest until I see the kid. But I also know that so long as I am doing criminal activities, I cannot risk seeing it. You know?"

"I know," Packie says, and nods thoughtfully before turning the radio back on and effectively ending the conversation. 

\---

LIBERTY CITY, LATE 2008

Somehow, neither of you end up drunk. This is unprecedented. You tried to lay low so as to gauge his mood, his thoughts, his reactions; apparently, he was playing the same exact game. 

Both of you walk - not stagger - out of the Irish joint a skip and a hop away from his mother's house, hands in your pockets and only a slight sway in each of your steps. 

"So, like, shit, I think we've gotta fuckin'...talk about this or somethin'," Packie says, his voice low and faux-casual, as if he were talking about the weather or a song he heard on the radio. 

"Sure," you say, shrugging despite the fact that he is not looking at you. You keep walking towards the alley to where one of Roman's taxis are parked. You actually took a few jobs earlier. It wasn't too bad. Eventually, you'll become as jaded and bitter as that Mohammed that works for him, but for now, you are cautiously optimistic. It's so nice to make an honest living.

Once you're both in the car, Packie lets out a deep and heavy sigh. You start the car and glance over. He's licking his lips. They look soft for once - thoughts of him pestering Kate for some lip balm pop into your head - and there's a hint of rose suddenly coloring his cheeks.

"SO," he says all too loudly. He clears his throat. At normal volume, "So."

"So," you say. "What is troubling you?"

"I'm - " he clears his throat once more. When he speaks, it comes out jumbled and together, words kissing the ends of each other. "I'mnotgay."

"I never thought you were."

"Like..." He scratches the back of his head, then furiously rubs at the stubbly facial hair lining his jaw. "Okay, fuck. This queer shit? It ain't exactly my usual scene." 

"All right."

"And. I don't feel totally comfortable, um, in theory. In theory..."

"But, yes?"

It's sort of cute, in a way, watching himself stumble all over himself like a newborn fawn. You can see the conflict in his eyes. It's the very same sexuality crisis you've distantly observed in some over the years; the conundrum of enjoying same-sex encounters, but the moral issue of BUT. But this, but that --

There's just something about killing people for a living that really makes social issues like this a non-issue for you. It tends to put things in perspective. The concept of sin is subjective, and that’s if you cared in the first place. You suppose you did a long time ago, as a child, when you still believed in a just God. Before the war. You were raised a certain way, after all. But everything is in perspective, and everything is subjective. A just God doesn’t let children suffer, and a just God wouldn’t care about two men fucking. You don’t see why you should, either. 

You suppose you have a very modern, if nihilistic way of thinking.

Packie looks at you, then looks away. He keeps half squinting. "But," he says, slowly and drawn out, as if he thinks he'll change his mind halfway through the sentence, "I'm likin' this and don't wanna stop."

"Well. I agree, Packie, minus the weird mind game you're playing with yourself."

He slams his hand on the console between you and whips his head around to meet your gaze. "What the fuck do you mean?" There's not any genuine anger - just his usual dramatics.

"There's nothing, ah, wrong with this."

"I mean. I, I - "

"Packie." You touch his shoulder lightly. He doesn't lean away or tense up beneath your touch. "If this makes you happy, and it is not hurting you, then what could be so bad about it?"

He rolls his eyes and slumps back into the seat. You take this as a cue to begin driving.

"Argh. You don't understand, man, I got that - that Catholic guilt or some shit."

"You've already told me you don't totally buy into that crap," you chuckle. 

"Okay, then it's - it's." He lets out a groan, sounding like a petulant child doing his chores; "It's my fuckin' family, okay?"

Kate's probably gay. Your many outings with her led you to this conclusion yourself, though you have no proof and she never told you. It just seems kind of obvious, though, and if it's about acceptance, you really don't follow, and so you wait for his explanation. There’s no point in lecturing him.

"Like. Derrick prob'ly would have been cool with it, but he's...a nonstarter. Kate? I don't fuckin' KNOW how she'd feel about it. Probably give me hell for it. Gerry and Frankie? Fuck, man, I'd NEVER hear the end of it. And me ma...She'd, you know."

"I know?"

He looks at you pointedly, and in the dim of the evening, his face is lit only by golden streetlights. His crooked nose and marred face look godly in a way that is unique to him, in a way that applies to him and only to him. It's not terribly fitting for the mood of this conversation. He raises his eyebrows. 

"My dad," he says. 

"I don't follow."

Packie lets out a strangled sound and clenches his hands into claws. "Do I gotta explain fuckin' everything to you, you foreign fuck? She's gonna think my dirty fuckin' dad made me like this, like, like a fag or - " His voice keeps rising and rising in both pitch and fervor, until you cut him off --

"Packie, stop."

He slumps once again, sighing and rubbing at his temples. His posture falls back to the shadows and the illusion of grandeur is shattered. You don't care.

"I don't think you're worried about your mother thinking that. I think you’re worried that that is true." You choose you words very carefully, strumming your fingers on the steering wheel and going ten miles under the speed limit as you think. There's hardly anybody on the back streets in this area of town at this time of night, anyway. You can hear cars and city noises, but you still suddenly feel as if it's just you and Packie on the planet. "Nobody made you any way. You just are what you are."

He goes silent and just looks out the window. 

You pull into the park near his mother's house and shut the car off, waiting for him to say something, anything. 

It takes a while, but eventually, he speaks, still not looking at you. You can't see his reflection in the window - the park lights obscure his visage.

"I haven't been in a real relationship since the eleventh grade. And don't bring up one night stands and shit, that don't count. It's been a goddamn long time, okay? And I don't - I don't think I really know how to act in a real relationship. Like, I want this to be a thing, I wanna try, but I don't know what to do, and I'm just...I'm fuckin' scared, you know?"

"You don't have to act any way, Packie. I don't know if you realize this, but I am perfectly content with your regular terrible self."

He laughs. It's a short bark and it doesn't last nearly long enough.

\---

LOS SANTOS, VERY LATE 2008

Oh, god, it hurts. 

That's the only word you can muster up to describe it - it just hurts. It's a deep, deep hurt that has sunk into your muscles, into your bones, and it permeates from your core like poison spreading through your veins. You can almost feel its toxicity and how it is making you sluggish, making you lose sleep, making your eyes sting from the constant urge to cry (but constant inability to). 

There's no word (in English or Serbian or even Russian) that describes it. You're just sticking with hurt. 

Packie has been very clearly feeling it, and unlike you, he has been making a conscious effort to further numb himself. You wonder if that's the difference between the two of you - you respond to hurt with a pained numbness, and he seems to respond to it with simply feeling too much. You have been in Los Santos for five days and you don't think he's been sober for even five minutes of it; between the coke and the booze, he's been an absolute fucking wreck. In a way, it's given you something else to fixate on. To focus on. You're just thankful that he's had the sense to stay away from anything worse, though you suppose it's Derrick's memory that is keeping him in check there - not necessarily you.

(You know he doesn't forgive you. You know he never will. You see it in the raw pain in his eyes and you hear it in his snot-filled sobbing in the middle of the night. It's not something you're going to be able to forget.)

It's a call from his brother that momentarily puts a break to both of your anguish. 

It's a Sunday, and Packie's phone has been going off nonstop, but he just keeps shoving it further and further under the lumpy hotel mattress until the both of you can only barely hear the vibrating. 

"I don't wanna fuckin'..." He had said after he initially stowed it away, and let his sentence fall apart, punctuating it with a stubborn swig of the shitty liquor you bought upon breezing into town. He hasn't bothered mixing it with anything. Hasn't since the plane touched down on the west coast - somehow, he had barely held it together while the two of you cleaned up your respective messes in Liberty City; your entrance to San Andreas heralded in a new, messy beginning. 

Your phone goes off, though, after thirty minutes of ignoring the buzzing. You answer it. You don't have anything better to do - granted, you're currently an unshaven, unbathed mess, but it's not as if it's going to be anyone asking you to go bowling. 

It's an unmarked number. 

"Yeah," you say dimly into the phone. You wonder if the tinny speakers on the other end will accurately carry the sound of your voice, the sound of your grieving, or if it will just make you sound as you always do. You wonder if the stranger will have any idea of - 

"Why the fuck isn't Packie picking up? Did the little prick go and get himself killed or something?" It's Francis. It is very obviously Francis. There's nobody in the world who's got that sort of slimy lilt to his voice. It's definitely Francis.

"He's fine." Your voice is sharp, sharper than a blade. It's your only defense. "What is it? What is so important?"

Frankie's voice is low, you realize, and a bit scratchy. He's still doing his fair share of mourning, you realize. It can't be easy for him - he's the one who is stuck dealing with the matriarch of the McReary family; hell hath no fury like a woman's scorn, and you imagine there's a similar application to sadness, as well. 

"It..He..." He takes a deep breath. "I'm on a fucking burner phone, okay, I bought an actual and literal burner phone for this, I - I went to a goddamn store and had to ask a cashier where they kept shitty little pay-upfront phones, so you need to realize how serious this information is, what I am about to tell you, what - " He's rambling, and it distinctly reminds you of the drunk guy you're sharing a hotel room with. Sometimes it's hard to remember that Francis and Packie are related, but now is not one of those times. "It's goddamn IMPORTANT, and you can't fucking tell ANYONE, do you understand that?"

"Yeah. Except Packie?"

"Yeah. Yeah, you moron, except Packie." He takes another deep breath. He is usually so composed - then again, though, you haven't talked to him since he made you off Derrick. The memory still brings a sick feeling to your stomach, but it pales in comparison to what you've been feeling these days. It almost makes sense in your bleary mind to make a truce with Francis, to at least hear what he has to say. 

"Got it."

You can almost hear him rubbing at his temples or taking a swig of whiskey. You wonder if he's at the office, or in some Algonquin tourist spot, or maybe he's even at home. The fatigue is leaking through the phone. "The Peg? He's fuckin' dead."

He waits a moment as if he's letting it set in. You think you're waiting for it to set in, too, but you just feel nothing. An absence of something. It's a muted feeling, you realize after a moment of silence, of the sort you felt after killing Darko. 

(You still wonder if you were ultimately supposed to let him live. You still feel gross about it - dirty, as if his sins were somehow transferred from his muddled soul to yours.)

"...How."

"That brings us to, to, to the burner phone. I don't - I don't have confirmation. I don't think I ever fuckin' will. Don't need it, though, I know my own goddamn brother. Gerry got him. I don't know how, I don't know when, but he fuckin' got him." He takes a deep, shaky breath, and then expels a smoker's cough - it's deep and phlegmy and sends a jolt of static though the phone's speakers. "So there's that."

"So there's that?"

"So there's that. Vengeance is served."

"Vengeance is served," you echo dimly, and you don't know how you're supposed to feel. You are in no mood for Frankie's weird moral charade, or his weird cognitive dissonance - there's enough of the latter in the room right now to suffocate you, and adding his isn't going to make you feel any better. Pegorino's death is just, and right, and is completely and absolutely necessary, and had this happened perhaps a week earlier, you'd feel less numb about it. But now? It's not going to bring Roman or Kate back. You're just tired. 

You're just really fucking tired. 

Perhaps it's the long, drawn out pauses, or perhaps it's the tone of your voice, but Francis seems to catch your mood and sighs. 

"Tell my brother I said hi." There's hesitation in his voice, as if he's going over your complicated history, over his own grief, over everything that's happened, but he still says what he says nonetheless. "Take care of him. Take care of yourself." It means nothing to you. 

"Sure," you say, and you close your flip phone with a satisfying CLICK. 

You really can't stand that guy. 

Packie, who had somehow remained silent through the entire phone call - no crying, no babbling, no clingy comments or requests - finally pipes up. 

"So?" He sounds worse than his brother did. He sounds not just rough around the edges, but rough around the corners, too. 

You set your jaw and try to figure out how to tell him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> niko has kind of an ivan fyodorovich view of god and i totally went ham on that
> 
> also all the chapter titles are from songs that i listened to at 17 and its a bit cringey but if 17 year old me did the heavy lifting here, then 17 year old me gets to have a little homage. be gentle to your younger selves, yall.


	3. part iii: you can normalize; don't it make you feel alive?

LOS SANTOS, EARLY 2009  
PACKIE

So, here's the problem: you've got a quarter of a tank of gasoline, a duffel bag stuffed with about half a mill worth of coke in the trunk, and to top it all off, Niko is sleeping in the passenger side and isn't even conscious enough to give you a reason to try to keep it together. You don't know why you do this to yourself. You really don't fucking know. 

Like, fuck, it would be so much easier to just go to college or something. Learn some algebra. Maybe take up drawing and painting again. That was so much fun. You distantly wonder if your mother still has that self portrait of thirteen-year-old you somewhere in the house. God, she probably does. You can almost see it stuffed under some old receipts or paperwork or forged legal documents. What's with old people and their habit of hoarding receipts? You don't think you've ever held onto a receipt for more than a few days. Always gets lost. Taxes, yeah, whatever - those aren't exactly important when all of your income comes from illicit business. Besides, Gerry always dealt with that stuff, and-

Get it together, Packie. 

You put the top of the Feltzer back up around three, because it was getting really fucking hot. It's way past four now and Niko is fast asleep, despite your shitty driving on the shitty roads and the shitty rock music playing on the shitty radio that you still really need to get fixed. Niko tells you there's nothing wrong with it, but God, you swear there's a static hum in the background, even when you're playing a CD. The music itself isn't exactly helping, either, because that cruelly ironic Third Eye Blind song has come on about three times since noon. Since when is that rock? Christ. That hook is going to be stuck in your head for days - you can just see it; you'll be back at the restaurant for the last fucking time, handing the boss his cut of the money, and all that you'll be able to think about will be the DOO-DOO-DOO, DOO-DOODOO-DOO refrain. 

Saying that you're feeling manic is an understatement. It's not the sort that happens to you periodically and cyclically, and it's not the type brought on by being on a bender for a couple of days - it's just anxiety, raw and simple. You're worried you're going to get pulled over, like a kid caught with his hands in the cookie jar. Coke jar. Coke-ie jar. Whatever. You're worried it's all gonna go to hell somehow - when do drug deals ever go all right? When? You don't think you can think of a single time, at least not when it's been just you. Gerry was always so good at orchestrating that shit, and loathe as you are to admit it, your dad was, too. Somehow, externalities always get caught up in your sphere, and everything always goes to shit. It feels like an inevitability. You're regretting agreeing to this already. The adrenaline was fun at first, but the guilt has since morphed it into something less palatable.

The guilt mostly stems from what you're the most worried about: Niko. Niko is going to find out, and he is going to be angry. What's worse is that he might even be sad. You don't like looking into his eyes and seeing them glazed over and cold, all sad and desolate like a dead forest in the winter. It doesn't fit him. He looks so much better when he's smiling, or at least not thinking about how hellish things have been or are. You guess that's true for most people, but it's especially true for him. When his stupid hazel eyes light up and look all warm, like there's a fireplace sittin' behind his irises, it makes you feel happy, too. 

God, when the fuck did you become such a sap? Is this what having a sister die does to a guy? Would not recommend. 

On the upside, it's five in the afternoon and you're almost to fucking Paleto Bay. You were going to switch off with Niko about halfway there, but then the fuck went and fell asleep. It kind of makes you nervous - he's more apt to freaking out in his sleep than you are. Sometimes you'll wake up to him panicking and shouting - you're never really sure if he's shouting in his sleep or if he's got one foot in the waking world and one foot out. You don't feel like it's your place to intrude and investigate; he, after all, minds your privacy and lets you sob and shout and freak out when you need to, so you should do the same.

(Sometimes you go to him for consolement, but he's never come to you. You wonder if he doesn't need it or if he just thinks he doesn't need it. The harsh truth, you know, is that this is a burden neither of you can handle alone.)

Niko snuffs a little in his sleep. You have half of a mind to wake him up by yourself, before he goes off and starts yelling and reaching for the pistol in the glove box. Wouldn't that be a fucking way to go, eh? Accidentally killed by your best fucking friend in a crazed sleepy frenzy. 

Would it be a bullet or the resulting car crash that would kill you in this scenario? Maybe some things are best left alone and not thought about. 

Niko snuffs again, and it jerks you from your grim thoughts. You glance away from the road and towards him - his face is twisted into a scowl, and the corner of his lips are twitching. You look back to the road and use a hand to shake his shoulder. 

"Wake up, darling," you say somewhat sarcastically (really, your pseudo-romance is a chapter you're STILL so very, very confused on), "don't flip your shit on me." 

"Whatever," he says groggily, and swats your hand away, but you move in and shake him a bit more. He eventually complies, and though he groans, he does sit up straight and readjust his seat. "What? We there yet?"

You scan your surroundings. The coastal scenery has since turned to something more forest-like, and it did so far faster than would seem possible. One moment it's a beach, the next, you're seeing fucking elk. Niko probably has no idea how long he was out. 

"Give or take," you say. "Maybe twenty or thirty minutes left. I dunno. It's getting kinda late, though, I was thinking we could get somethin' to eat somewhere."

Niko eyes you warily. It is unlike you and your tendencies to eat a proper meal without basically being forced to, but that concoction from this morning didn't settle the best...and it's been a while since you've had a line, which is truthfully what majorly fucks up your appetite. 

(You definitely don't have issues with disordered eating. It's totally normal for a grown man to skip meals as long as he can just because he's so disgusted in himself. Definitely normal.)

"Yeah, shut the fuck up, you fuckin'..." The usual half-hearted insults don't feel good on your tongue right now. You just sigh instead. "There's probably a burger place somewhere around Paleto. Maybe a breakfast joint. You got a preference?"

Niko shrugs. "Just somewhere with coffee."

"Ha! I knew you would regret turning down my generous offer of-"

"Of sludge, yes," he drawls, "I am definitely regretting that." He wipes at his eyes blearily. "I didn't sleep well last night. Still feel blood on my arms."

"I don't really get it, man, you've been doin' that shit for years. Why's it botherin' you now?"

He rolls down the window a sliver and sticks the tips of his fingers out. The sound of rushing air blocks out the low music, and with it, the quiet thoughts ruminating in the back of your mind. He sighs. It's hardly noticeable. "I had a similar issue when this sort of thing started happening in Liberty City."

You didn't know him until he'd been in LC for a little while - until he was already into the swing of dealing with drugs, killing, thieving. You try and imagine a younger, slightly more hopeful Niko than the one you met and it doesn't seem possible - 

"I got my hopes up. I thought it would be different. I was broken again - punished, I suppose, for my ignorance. My..."

"Naivete." That's all it takes - you can see it, almost. You can see his eyes cracking, you can see his hands trembling, you can see his jaw setting, you can see the blood of that Russian boss on his shirt...and you feel your stomach drop, because you put him through that all over again.

"Sometimes hope is all we can have, Packie. Hope that things will get better. Hope that our difficulties will end. It hurts whenever that is taken away."

"I think," you say cautiously, "that...maybe hoping is just what people do. Maybe it's not your fault that you keep getting burnt, and maybe it ain't your fault that you keep gettin' your hopes up. Maybe you can't help it. Nihilism don't come easy, you know."

You glance over again. There's a sliver of a smile on his face. 

God, you wish conversation could be lighter than this. 

\---

You end up in a run-down diner, and though it is an experience you're not very used to (you can count on one hand how many times you've been out of a major city), it feels weirdly homey. The two of you sit across from each other in a booth - the table is old and the leather of the seats are cracked, but it's a welcome change from the car's seats. There's only so long someone can sit in a convertible before spines begin to crack. 

"Sort of reminds me of that diner down in Broker you dragged me to that one time," you say, scanning the menu the waitress set down in front of you moments prior. "The one you got banned from."

Niko rolls his eyes. "Are you still giving me shit for that? I told you, Packie, if you kill someone in a restaurant, they're not going to want you back in there."

You truthfully don't remember the story that well. Something about his steroid-junkie friend needing a fag taken care of (in light of things, are you allowed to say that word, or should you stay further away from it than before?). What you do remember is drunkenly going through your closet and trying to find an outfit that would properly disguise Niko on your outing, because Roman said the place had good milkshakes, and by god, you wanted a fucking milkshake. 

To be honest, a milkshake kind of sounds good now, too. 

"No, no, I'm not giving you shit at all, Niko. The establishment was only doing the, ah, logical thing - what I'm still making fun of you for is killing the dude right there, in the open. Would it have killed you to wait until you were at his house or in a car or somethin'? It just lacks taste, my good man. It lacks class."

"Trust me, you wouldn't have wanted to sit through an entire date with the guy, either."

"I find it hard to believe you'd want to sit through a proper date with anyone. I mean, it seems like you've got a million of bad date stories from your few months in LC, man, and I've gotta wonder if there's maybe a common denominator at play here."

He lowers his eyes to his menu and raises an eyebrow. "What are you trying to say?"

"Nothing in particular. Just making an observation...if you've never been on a good date, then maybe you're the one who's just bad at dating."

"I've been on good ones before." It's not a haughty tone in his voice, per se; just an arrogant one. "I've just also been on a lot of bad dates as well. And how does that saying go? Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones?"

"Yeah, but I know I'm a fuckin' ordeal - there's a reason I only go for one night stands, Niko, and it ain't because I hate everyone I come into contact with - I am blessed with awareness, my friend, and I fully acknowledge that I am terrible to go on a date with."

His change in tone is almost imperceptible, but you've been around him enough to catch the downshift. "I wouldn't say that."

"What, you sayin' I do hate everyone? Because that's awful accusatory, especially coming from y-"

"No, I'm saying that you're not terrible to go on a date with."

Before you have time to process what he said, the waitress swoops in to set down your drinks and take your orders. You order just a milkshake, but Niko tacks on a burger to yours and gets one for himself.

It's probably a good thing that the waitress stepped in then, you think, because you know that you would have blushed terribly, and while blushing is kind of cute on a fifteen year old girl, it's definitely not on a 29-year-old con. You can't really help it, though; you're just fuckin' Irish. Gerry always flushes ruby when he drinks, and Derrick always looks like a tomato when he gets telling dirty jokes. It's just genetics.

(Kate used to mockingly offer to let you borrow her foundation to cover up the visual cues of your embarrassment. You told her to fuck off then. You still feel a wince of regret every time you remember being mean to her. You shrug the thought off before it escalates.)

"That's what this is, right?" Niko says between sips of coffee. He says he likes it black, and he always orders it that way, but you know better - he's the reason you're always running out of creamer back at the house. You pull three miniature cups of creamer and a few packets of sugar from the display at the end of the table and push them towards him. He begins pouring them into his cup, not breaking eye contact. 

"What, a date?"

"Sure."

"...Do you want it to be?"

"I guess that depends on a lot of things, Packie."

You lean back against the soft, broken leather of the booth, clasping your hands together on the table. "Well, lay those things on me." 

He sighs. He sighs a lot these days, and when he does, it's always as if he's breathing out smoke, and all of his woes are condensed neatly into a bonfire in his gut. You suppose breathing it out is better than choking on it. "We never really talked about things, did we? We just put it aside and dealt with...the situation."

"Put it on a back burner."

"I'll never understand your sayings."

"Idioms. This one ain't even that hard, man - it's like when you're cooking. You put it on a burner in the back because you're not ready to deal with it yet, and the important stuff’s on the front burners."

"No, I got what you meant, but - aurgh, we're getting off topic."

"Sorry. Go on."

He finishes adding an absurd amount of creamer and sugar to his coffee, and arranges the trash into a neat little pile next to his cup. "Do you want me to spell things out?"

"No, I don't think you need to." What you want to help him spell out is how you've got some weird codependence thing going on, but you can't bring yourself to necessarily care. You want to bring up how Niko thinks you hate his guts for being so heavily involved in - well, in the Kate ordeal, but you don't know how to say it. You want to say that you know he knows you need him, and that you know he feels like he'd be taking advantage of you by doing anything other than being your weirdly-close friend. You kind of want to throttle him, and shake his shoulders, and scream about how that's a right fuckin' FALLACY, because his fatalistic marytristic way of thinking depends wholly on his not being hurt by what happened, too - but that's just not so. He has suffered enough. It's somewhat your fault for bringing it up so goddamn much, anyway. You don't know how to say any of this. You don't know if you even want to. 

Your throat catches, but it's not from undue emotions, and you lower your voice, trying to put your scattered, broken thoughts into a more coherent form; "Well, I don't think it would make things any worse."

He doesn't agree, but he doesn't disagree, either; he side eyes his coffee. "We're in a weird place as is."

"Yeah. Yeah. Fuckin' A, yeah. It's fine, I guess, but it's weird. Are we dating? Are we not? Are we like blood brothers or some shit now?" He winces at your words, and you're not really sure which phrase set him off. "I guess it's just a question of...do we need to actually quantify it, and give it a name, or is it just cool with whatever it is?"

"I don't know, Packie. I can't say. I think...there's some part of me that is worried." He clears his throat. It's not as if Niko is the world's most urgently wise philosophical dude - although, standing next to you, it sometimes feels that way - but when he gets that tone in his voice, you feel like you've got to drop everything and listen. "Worried that if we put a name on things, or try to make it something it's not, it'll ruin it."

There's a heaviness in the air that can only be interpreted one way: I don't want to ruin it.

"That's fine. That's cool. We don't have to make a big deal out of things. It's just you and me, and it's our fucked up little romantic-friendship-suffering game. I'm..." You exhale, loud, and it feels like you, too, are exhaling smoke; it's as if something has been lifted from your shoulders. "I'm okay with that, actually."

"Me too." Then, after a beat, "There's something else I am still stuck on. Did he ever text you back?" He doesn't need to clarify who he is.

Your phone feels like a red-hot weight in your pocket all of a sudden. You fight the urge to glance out the window to the car, to the duffel bag in the trunk, because that would feel incriminating in some way. "No. Not yet. But he will."

"If you say so. I don't want to keep doing this. And there's still a matter of the future, and..." He scoffs, waving a hand; "you know. All of it. This is such a shitstorm that it makes my head hurt." 

"You and me both, brother."

The waitress reappears, and she sets your food down. Niko thanks her. You take a long sip of your milkshake. It is essentially chocolate milk mix mixed into watered down vanilla ice cream, but it hits the spot in a weird way. 

Niko nudges at your foot subtly with his own. You look out the window. 

As soon as this deal goes through, things will be okay.

\---

LIBERTY CITY, 1995

Things are never fucking okay, are they?

The cold winter air cuts into your throat like rusty knives. You stopped running five minutes ago but your body hasn't seemed to notice the lack of displacement yet, and so the adrenaline continues to vibrate through your veins and your lungs keep choking on nothing. 

Police sirens wail in the distance, but the alley you've ducked down into feels safe. Long shadows obscure your own, and you let yourself finally fall to your knees behind an industrial sized dumpster. Snow and slush pad your fall and soak into your threadbare jeans. You hardly even notice. 

Merry Christmas, you suppose. Merry fuckin' Christmas. Your father had even said that to you himself only hours before - he tucked a bag into your hands and looked you dead in the eye, like some sort of demented Santa Claus or some shit. The smell of weed permeated through the cloth and stained the air between you two, but it did nothing to mask the staleness of his menthol breath. It was acid dripping from his mouth. 

It figures that he'd pick you to be his little drug delivery boy, huh? You always were his favorite, after all. Your hands start to shake, and it's not from the cold, so you push the thoughts aside and concentrate on the distant sirens. Drug deals always go wrong with you, even when it's child's shit like weed. You haven't even touched any since you were, what, fourteen? You’re almost seventeen. You’re almost an adult. Come on, Packie. Get it together. Get it to-FUCKEN-gether. You’re not a baby no more. 

You doubt the cops are after you; they’re probably after the guy who shot the place up. The drug deal went bad. Drug deals always go bad with you. This is a theme that will soon make itself apparent in your life. You can buy, but you can’t sell. For fuck’s sake - it’s just weed. It’s literally just weed. Devil’s lettuce. It’s not like it’s crack or some shit. You suppose that since it’s the holidays that folks are feeling a bit testy. Credit cards are maxed out. No tolerance. 

All it means for you, though, is that your father isn’t going to have any tolerance for your failure, either. Your hands start shaking, and it’s not from the cold. You tuck the bag into your coat and clasp your trembling hands together in the name of a lord you don’t believe in (would a just God let any of that shit happen to you all those fucken’ years ago?). Frenzied thoughts are beginning to overtake your brain. That’s the problem with this whole fucken’ set up. That’s the problem with this whole fucken’ family. You trust your brothers. They’re good at what they do, even if they’re psychopaths at times. They wouldn’t hurt you. You trust your sister, too. She’s not involved in any of it, though, God bless her soul. Your father, though…

There’s something dark in your father. There’s no light behind his eyes. You can fight for yourself now - you’re old enough, now, that you could claw your way halfway out of hell - but you couldn’t, then, and he knew it. And you live in perpetual fucking fear of disappointing him. Of doing him wrong. Your throat seizes up when he looks at you wrong; hell, when he looks at you at all. You still have nightmares.  
You probably always will. He tainted you. He left a black stain on your soul.

…And now you’re having a fucking panic attack in an alley on Christmas Day, tears and snot running down your face. Things never get better. Things never improve. You just want to take a fucking axe and split his fucking skull open, and scream to the heavens, LOOK AT WHAT YOU DID TO ME! I WAS HALWAY NORMAL! I HAD A SHOT AT BEING SOMEONE! I HAD A SHOT AT BEING A PERSON! YOU FUCKED ME OVER! NOW I’M A SHELL OF A PERSON! YOU TOUCHED ME AND NOW I’M BROKEN! The snow and ice burn your skin. They’re nearly numb, but shoot jolts of pain up your legs nonetheless. The sirens are getting further and further away, but your head still feels like it’s going to fucking explode. The tears running off your face feel thick and viscous like blood, like you were hit with a fucking hammer or something and maybe you’re dying. You knew you weren’t, but you sort of wish you were. Then you wouldn’t have to face the red-hot wrath of your father. 

Your inner monologue isn’t making any sense any more. It’s just pain and panic. It’s a struggle to stay silent behind the frozen dumpster. This is definitely not your finest moment. Not by a wide margin.


End file.
